In the United States and many other countries of the world, snack-type foods have become exceedingly popular. By "snack-type foods" is meant crisp fried foods which are adaptable to be eaten from the hand and which are easily preserved and transported. Such snack-type foods include potato chips and other chip-like products made of corn, wheat, potatoes, and other grain materials.
Typically, the snack-like foods are of a vegetable or grain mixture and are shaped into the desired pieces and then deep fried to produce a product which is convenient and ready to eat.
One deleterious characteristic of most existing snack-type foods is that they are characteristically high in sugar and starches and low in protein. Typically, the ready-to-eat snack-type foods may contain 50 to 70% by weight of starch and sugars and only 6 to 10% protein. For this reason many dietary authorities have recommended against the excess use of snack-type foods, and this is particularly true as to the diet of average American teenagers, who are great consumers of snack foods.
The present invention is directed towards providing a snack-type food similar to potato chips and corn chips and the many other varieties presently on the market but in a composition which provides two to three times as much protein and only 1/3 to 1/2 as much sugar and starch. Stated another way, and object of this invention is to provide a snack-type food which has the appearance, crispiness, taste, and convenience of typical snack-type foods presently marketed but which has superior dietary characteristics due to increased protein and decreased starch composition.
Another object of this invention is to provide a snack-type crisp convenient food which uses as its basic raw material the whey left as a waste product from the manufacture of cottage cheese and other type cheeses by the dairy industry.
These general objects, as well as other and more specific objects of the invention will be fulfilled in the following description and claims, taken in conjunction with the attached drawings.